Collaborative Unit Openers

For this coming week, I will be participating in Unit Opener Planning Week (and hope you will be too!). This is primarily geared toward Open Court units, but always take ideas that you like and tweak them to suit your needs!

Okay, here’s my first idea which I heard through a colleague and hope to implement at my school.

Have collaborative unit openers among your grade level.

Among your grade level, have each teacher create one truly exciting 30 minutes unit opener lesson, rather than plan for an entire day of unit openers. On the day of the unit opener, each teacher will teach the one lesson to each class, rotating from one classroom to the next. The benefits are many. Teachers collaborate. Teachers are only responsible for planning one 30 minutes lesson, but students benefit from 3 or 4 or 5 excellent lessons. Students get to meet and experience being taught by different teachers, different modalities, different styles. On a more selfish level, because teachers are teaching someone else’s students and know that other teachers will be teaching your students, you tend to feel competitive and want to create the “best” lesson, pushing your unit openers to a higher level of rigor and fun.